by Tom Anderson
Although the King initially urged a universal government of national reconciliation, by late 1811 political factions had inevitably begun to form. The old ultraroyalistes, drawing their support mostly from the plural-voting deputies, collected under the banner of the Parti royaliste or Parti blanche, so called because of their use of Bourbon white as their identifying colour. They wore the old white Bourbon cockade rather than the blue-white-yellow one that had come in with Louis’s liberal reforms to Royal France, making no secret of their desire to try to return matters to the old pre-1794 status quo of the ancien régime. The undoubted leader of the Blancs was Louis Henri d’Aumont, Duc d’Aumont. The Duke was a young man, only in his thirties. He had mercifully been visiting Vienna when his father Louis Alexandre had perished in the phlogisticateur, much of his family with him, as his ancestral house, the Hôtel d'Aumont, burned. Though Louis Henri did not see his escape as merciful. He was understandably perpetually bitter and unforgiving about the actions of the Jacobins. He accepted (unlike many nobles) that men such as Le Diamant had indeed had legitimate complaints about the ancien régime, but argued that the crimes of the Jacobins far outweighed such matters and the only sensible course of action was to wipe all traces of the Revolution away forever. It drove the man mad to have to work with former servants of the Republic, a madness that in other men might have led to violence or suicide, but drove the Duke instead to heights of caustic parliamentary rhetoric.
The Duke was opposed by the leader of the party at the other end of the spectrum, the Parti de la Liberté or Parti rouge. This was led by Olivier Bourcier, the man who had finally decided to switch sides at the end of the war. History has generally judged Bourcier fairly, a man who believed it better to compromise his principles given the mysterious vanishing of his Administrateur than to fight futilely on to the end and only pile more casualties on both sides of the ledger, weakening France further. Better half a loaf than no bread, a somewhat liberalised France than no France at all. Nonetheless Bourcier was driven to equal fury by Aumont, who called him ‘double traitor’ for his actions and suggested he was only out for himself. In an earlier time this might have resulted in a duel, but the example of the Carolinian tended to dissuade men of such unequal social station from engaging in such pursuits. Bourcier was undoubtedly not that capable a politician in the technical sense, having derived his position chiefly from the loyalty he engendered from the army; the Rouges’ real parliamentary star was the charismatic René Apollinaire, who had helped negotiate the peace between the King’s forces and Bourcier in the first place, and was one of the few talented deputies to have survived Lisieux’s purged rubber-stamp NLA. Many pointed towards him as a future prime minister if the Rouges were ever able to gain a working majority. The Rouges used their position in the Grande-Parlement – drawn, unsurprisingly, mostly from the single-voting common deputies – to try to fight for further reforms and liberalisations. They were united against a common foe, but possessed much difference of opinion amongst themselves, as evidenced by the fact that men as different as Henri Rouvroy and Pierre Artaud could share a party. Both were at this point fairly obscure.
Into the middle of this mess between Blancs and Rouges were a group of deputies both noble and common who were simply tired of the constant sniping, the desires to apparently re-fight the late war, to weaken France with a violent round of civil unrest. These men drew their ideological inspiration chiefly from the liberal King himself – arguably by some definitions they were therefore ironically more royalist than the absolutist Parti royaliste. They called themselves officially the Parti modéré but tended to be known as Les Bleus thanks to their use of blue as a colour. It was argued that this was the most prominent addition to the new national flag King Louis had introduced and therefore being emblematic of the middle-of-the-road course he desired. The Bleus’ message emphasised the future over the past (whether the past of Louis XIV or the past of Robespierre and Lisieux) and the faction included many enthusiasts for new technologies such as steam power and Optel which could continue to transform the country. Steam was not Republican or Royalist, they argued, but simply French.[256]
Heading up this party was – who else? – the former Vicomte d’Angers, now the Duc d’Angers after his actions in the latter part of the war: Napoleon Bonaparte. With him was Paul, Vicomte de Barras, his right-hand man and the Comptroller-General of France. The two men had forged a strong political alliance and something of a friendship thanks to their work together in Royal France during the war. They also shared a disgust with both the Jacobins they had fought and the ultraroyalistes who had hindered them with their incompetence and bleatings over principle. “It used to be enemies afore us and enemies behind,” Bonaparte once dryly remarked. “Now they instead sit on either side of us. This is called progress.”
Both Bonaparte and Barras were technically noblemen, but both were the type of noblemen who could command the loyalty of commoners even in post-revolutionary France, when such loyalty had to be earned instead of just expected. While Bonaparte was ultimately from an upper-class Corsican family, the way his father had fled the island for Britain and both father and son had worked their way up from humble refugees to some of the highest positions in the land was a success story that could inspire even the lowliest peasant or worker. Bonaparte had earned his title, too, won it in battle, not inherited it from an ancestor who had won a battle five centuries before. Barras, though having been born into privilege, had nonetheless fought in India and made his money from working the Indian trade, rather than simply acquiring it through inheritance. Barras was also a clever man and a skilful political operator, while Bonaparte used the same attributes that had made him such a remarkable battlefield commander; his charisma, his decisiveness, the personal connection he could make each and every one of his men feel. Between them they carved out an appreciable slice of the Grande-Parlement for the Bleus.
The Bleus were nonetheless the smallest of the three main parties. However, Bonaparte was able to remain effective prime minister by means of careful manipulative tactics and the fact that the French were still getting used to the largely British-derived electoral system that Louis XVII had introduced. Party discipline was lax, and both Bourcier and Aumont preferred to spend their time sniping at each other and sticking stubbornly to their guns rather than actually trying to form a government. Neither the Blancs nor Rouges possessed enough deputies to gain a majority. Therefore, assisted by the fact that he was the King’s favourite, Bonaparte was able to tempt a certain number of deputies from both Blancs and Rouges to cross the floor, helping to shore up his initial position.
But the Bleus were still far from a majority, so Bonaparte adopted the position of doing deals (usually via Barras) with specific groups from either party. Many deputies were growing tired of their leaders’ inability to compromise and therefore supported Bonaparte’s Bleus on a case-by-case, conditional basis. By the end of 1812, Aumont and Bourcier had realised they were becoming increasingly isolated and stopped reflexively voting against every measure Bonaparte tabled. Instead they also began engaging in the parliamentary process. Apollinaire even tried to build a coalition for Bourcier of his own, to steal Bonaparte’s thunder – but it was too late.
Bonaparte was careful not to side with one of the two other parties more than the other, biasing one bill to receive Rouge support, the next to receive Blanc. The result was rather incoherent, with the French state being successively liberalised and then illiberalised on an almost alternating basis. Nonetheless, it let Bonaparte slip through the provisions he himself wanted. Some of this was self-interest, such as boosting the powers of the Prime Minister and making the position more formal. He also pushed for continuing France’s researches into steam engines so that she did not fall behind her neighbours, and rebuilding the fleet. Barras continued to speak for colonial interests and was responsible for the (initially somewhat disastrous) appointment of Thierry de Missirien as Governor-General of French India.
Th
is shaky system, known retrospectively as l’équilibre politique, persisted until the Great Crisis of 1814. However, we should not ignore the effects of the death of Bonaparte’s father Charles in London in the winter 1813, said to be from a heart attack but in reality quite possibly instigated by the Duke of Marlborough’s PSC browncoat bullyboys. Barras recorded in his diary that Bonaparte froze up in a manner he had never seen when he read the message that had come in over the Optel network straight from Calais. The man who had calmly faced down Marshal Boulanger’s line of steam artillery at the Battle of Paris – no, had led his tiny galloper guns against them to blast brazenly in their flanks! – that man was gone, for a little while at least, and in his place was the son of a father. A father that son had always measured himself against, and who was now gone.
According to Barras’ diary, Bonaparte’s first words after reading the message – minutes later, as he screwed up the paper in his hand, were: “I will kill that bastard. So help me God, I will kill him. No! I should assemble the fleet and sail up the Thames like old Delicious did! Give him the shock of his life, let him wake up and find his nice new shiny palace is under my guns! That’ll learn him! That’ll learn him!”
In the event Barras was able to calm the Prime Minister down – just – and a month later Bonaparte attended his father’s funeral in London, restricting himself to a certain acid quip as he concluded his own memorial: “I would like to thank all you gentlemen for your attendance… along with Mr. Churchill.” This nonetheless chilled diplomatic relations between the two powers to the point that it was said that the Channel might have frozen over.[257]
While Bonaparte was out of the country, things moved apace in Parlement with both Rouges and Blancs struggling to build temporary coalitions. Barras attempted to hold the Bleus together with moderate success, but lacked Bonaparte’s charisma. He held quiet negotiations with both party leaders, and then went to King Louis to ask him to dissolve the Grande-Parlement and call a new election, hoping the result would be a more workable parliamentary makeup.
The King agreed, though Barras records that even he seemed a little nervous about performing such an action with Bonaparte out of the country. “It was at this point,” Barras writes portentously, “that the scales fell from my eyes and I truly saw what my friend had become, by tireless work and the skills of a leader: the pivot, the axis about which all France rotated, who outshone the sun of Louis XIV, who stood taller than L’Aiguille itself. And I thought upon it… and I feared.”
*
…the Grande-Parlement was dissolved on April 13th, one day before Bonaparte was due to return to Paris. King Louis, feeling the need to rally his people in the wake of the awkward deadlocks of the last few years, then elected to give a speech in the Place de la Loi (the former Place de la Révolution)[258] in order to remind them of the system and the importance of voting.
On his way to the Place, a figure leapt out from the crowd and, even as it was cut down by the King’s royal guards, managed to fire a single pistol shot through the window of his carriage. The King was hit in the shoulder in what might have been an almost trivial wound, would it not have been for the fact that the bullet unluckily pierced an artery. Louis XVII, lapsing into delirium, was rushed to L’Hôpital Royale (the former Institut National des Études Linnéens)[259] but was dead before reaching the doctors, and it is doubtful they could have done much in any case. His last words are apocryphally recorded as either “Jacques, now at last I understand” or “Don’t let it end this way, Leo…”
*
…chaos and confusion immediately broke out, with the identity of the hooded assassin becoming a hot topic and the Optel system meaning that the speed of rumour outstripped fact even faster than usual. The assassin was Pierre Boulanger, having survived his fatal duel on the field of Paris. No, it was Lazare Hoche, who had outrun the flames of perdition that Charles James Fox had unleashed upon him. No, it was the real heir to the throne, and Louis had always been an impostor! And, inevitably, it was Jean de Lisieux, having finally popped up after his mysterious disappearance more than five years previously. Ironically, at the time, that might actually have been one of the more plausible examples.
The truth was naturally more prosaic. The assassin was a young woman named Marie Hinault who had still been a child when Paris fell and still believed the propaganda that the Lisieux machine had drilled into her. What had pushed her over the edge, though, was her father’s death a few days previously thanks to what he blamed on the King’s taxes driving them to poverty. She had given her body to a soldier, then slit his throat and taken his pistol. She had no skill with weapons and it was only terrible ill luck that had led her to strike a fatal wound upon the King.
Naturally, in the absence of any concrete information (not that that would truly have made a difference) Paris descended into chaos and mobs roamed the streets beating up anyone of the opposite political persuasion. The Rouges naturally caught most of the backlash. This culminated in an attack on Olivier Bourcier’s steam-carriage as he attempted to flee the city in a manner ironically similar to that which so many nobles had when Bourcier had been just one of the angry young Sans-Culottes leading them to the phlogisticateur, back in 1795. Almost twenty years later, mob rule prevailed and Bourcier was summarily hanged in the street, though not before taking six of his attackers with him…
*
…the decapitation of the Rouge party served to temporarily placate the mob or at least drive it into confusion, with the Rouge-aligned gangs striking out randomly in revenge attacks but failing to achieve any lasting damage. René Apollinaire attempted to seize control, only to be shot accidentally by one of his own comrades behind a barricade. This was an act which has naturally been subject to countless conspiracy theories over the years but truly does appear to be one of the countless little tragedies that inevitably occurs in such a situation. Much French speculative romance ever since has focused on what might have happened in the ensuing years if the gifted orator Apollinaire had lived; a great missed opportunity for the Rouges, perhaps an André Malraux a generation earlier.
But we must stick to our facts. In this moment of relative calm, the Duc d’Aumont sought to secure the young Dauphin Prince Charles Louis Philippe and his mother Queen Hélène. Secure him against attacks by the mob, of course. The fact that Aumont would then be in a position to act as regent, with effective royal authority – ‘doing a Marlborough’ as it would later become known – was of course purely incidental.
However, the royal family was now ensconced in a secret hiding place, an understandable precaution that the King had enacted soon after his return to the city. As parts of Lisieux’s dreary Paris burned unmourned around them, the Blancs sought the location of the royals they had sworn to protect. Only one man in Paris would know…
*
…on the 15th, one day late, as the fires still raged, the prodigal son returned. He did not come alone. Having heard of the crisis via the Optel network not long after he had disembarked in Calais, Bonaparte assembled a small army of local regiments and militia and – crucially – twelve of France’s remaining Tortue armoured steam-wagons. With the words “Let the city be cleansed of those animals and their filth,” he led this force in a coordinated pattern through the streets, firing over rioters’ heads to drive them indoors. And if that would not do it, there was always his famous ‘whiff of grapeshot’ from the battle that had been fought not so far from here. Bonaparte was a hard, hard man and would not shrink at spilling civilian blood in order to preserve the peace he had fought so hard to win.
Alone, against a determined and well-led mob, Bonaparte’s force was laughably small and would have inevitably failed. However, there was not one single mob but rather vague groups loyal to all sides and others just in it for violence and looting. Twenty years earlier the Revolution had focused such public anger and greed into a single cause, but now there was no Le Diamant, no L’Épurateur, no Robespierre, no Hébert. Ah, Hébert. Yes, it had been t
o crush the uprising after Hébert’s death that Lisieux had first driven his Tortues through the streets of Paris, had first made his name and achieved his dominance. And Lisieux had, with typical foresight, designed the wide avenues of his new Rational Paris to better accommodate such vehicles for just such a role. After all, who could say when another irrational reactionary revolt would require smashing down?
In the end all it took were a few bloody incidents with gangs too stupid to take cover and the word was spreading desperately across Paris. Soon the grey and dreary City of Light was once more silent, though at least the blood on the streets lent a little colour to Lisieux’s design…
*
…Bonaparte, who of course also knew the secret hiding place, went alone to the anonymous little Taxonomic house on the Rue des Martyrs. There had been a few more Martyrs on the Rue, he sardonically noted (or so the biopic Monsieur l’Os would have us believe). Bonaparte knocked and entered.
Inside he found Aumont and two of his fellow Parti Royaliste deputies together with six soldiers of the elite Tirailleurs. From the ceiling came sounds indicating that the remains of the Royal Family were indeed present, though fearful.
“So you grace ourselves with your presence,” Aumont said (sneered, l’Os has it). “I am pleased to inform you that the situation is under control and your assistance is not required.”
“Hmm,” Bonaparte said in that French that was never quite accurate, always carried a hint of an accent. “An interesting definition of ‘under control’. The city was in flames.”
